For most of the last century, marketers invested in loyalty and trust. And that investment was repaid—many times over—when consumers stuck to Maxwell House because it was “Good to the Last Drop,” believed that, “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good,” or thought “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.” If a small food maker could get a word in edgewise, consumer brand relationships were entrenched, and—even if they knew about it—consumers would be challenged to get a product that wasn’t on the shelf at the local grocer.

It’s different today:

Brand loyalty has dropped over the last five years, with consumers 46 percent more likely to try new brands than before, according to Nielsen.

Consumer interest in specialty foods is high, driving growth at the expense of mainstream products.

Email, social media, and the web have democratized consumer access to information.

E-commerce allows consumers to act on and fulfill their purchasing impulses.

Even with a more level playing field, it’s difficult to stand out in flooded channels, and the moments of meaningful communication are fleeting, at best. Some think more messaging is the answer, but there is little value in adding noise to an already noisy environment. There are, however, ways to improve the quality of your connections and improve the results.

Conversion Rate Optimization is the science of improving the percent of engagements that give you the results you want online. At its core, it’s about doing more with the eyeballs you have: better motivating consumers to act and reducing the friction that prevents them from doing so.

Conversions are driven when you send the right message to the right person at the right time … and you drive them to action without confusing or distracting them in the process. Improving conversion rates is not highly complex but, for a small company, it may seem overly rigorous, iterative, and time consuming.

Fortunately, CRO experts have been at it for a while, and there is a large and growing knowledge base of best practices to borrow from. There’s an excellent free tutorial available online at conversionxl.com/conversion-rate-optimization, for starters. Major email and social media platforms have large free libraries of their own research and aggregated experience, as well.

It’s not easy to break through, but there’s never been a better opportunity to capitalize on the connections you make.